Are You a CRM Leader, Follower, or Just in the Way?

I really like talking with CRM journalist and all around smart guy Chris Bucholtz. Whenever we have an interview – it always beings around one topic and very quickly tangents off into a great conversation about what we as an industry could be doing better (as well as some side stops discussing WWII aircraft and strategy).

I especially enjoyed Chris’ take on one of the roadblocks to CRM success – Executive Fear – that he describes in his CRM Buyer piece. These are all great ideas. The notion that too many executives are afraid to take chances is a scary, but all too often true, situation. In a shaky economy, I believe this problem gets amplified, as top-level execs are too frightened to lose positions etc. – and simply go the “safe” route.

So – in your organization are you a CRM leader, follower…or just in the way?

As Chris so eloquently notes in his article – “Best practices are made, not born.” I love this statement. The sales and marketing leaders in your organization have to know what is important (lead generation, pipeline, the bottom line etc.) but cannot be afraid to shake things up a little. Instead of “if it ain’t broke, don;t fix it” mentality, a great CRM initiative should always foster a “how can we continually make this better?” mentality.

There are very few “turnkey machines” in the business world. More often than not, we are not in an organization with the luxury of ubiquity or near total market share – what I’m saying is that we are not all Google basically.

It is not always bad to “follow the leader” in terms of taking on proven CRM best practices. Startups and entrepreneurs can learn from larger, successful organizations while finding their identity. But, once found, companies need to differentiate and create their own killer experiences for their customers, develop new ways to pull in new leads, etc.

In the past, the technology supporting a CRM initiative was expensive and time consuming to deploy, configure and change over time. So, it made sense that a conservative approach won out more often than not. However, with today’s less expensive, ultra-flexible web and cloud-based CRM tools – there is far less excuse to take the safe route.

The tools are here now to better align the imagination of sales, marketing and customer service leaders with the actual technology solutions in place to make it happen.

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Jan Sysmans

Jan Sysmans brings 20 years of marketing and product management experience, including particular focus in the software-as-a-service segment, to his role as Senior Director of Product Marketing at SugarCRM. In this position, Mr. Sysmans is responsible for all global product marketing programs for SugarCRM. Mr. Sysmans speaks on behalf of SugarCRM about the value, benefits and future of commercial open source solutions at customer and industry events around the world.
Prior to assuming his current role at SugarCRM, Mr. Sysmans was the Enterprise Marketing TME (Technical Marketing Engineer) at Cisco WebEx and Director of Marketing at WebEx Communications. Earlier in his career, Mr. Sysmans held product management positions at PlaceWare, Ensim, Narus, XO Communications and Concentric Network Communications. He also served as the chairperson of the Marketing Communications committee on the SaaS Executive Council of the Software Information and Industry Association (SIIA) from 2006-2007.
Jan Sysmans holds a Bachelor of Science in commercial and diplomatic relations from the HUBrussels Business School (Belgium), and a Master of Business Administration in intercultural management from ICHEC Brussels Management School (Belgium). He speaks English, Dutch, French, German and Spanish